


Home Movies

by tuesday



Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies)
Genre: Adult Peter Parker, Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Spoilers, M/M, Resurrection, Spider-Man: Far From Home (Movie) Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-06
Updated: 2020-03-06
Packaged: 2021-02-28 22:35:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,420
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23034862
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tuesday/pseuds/tuesday
Summary: In which Tony is resurrected, watches a bunch of footage of what he's missed, and does some light breaking and entering.
Relationships: Peter Parker/Tony Stark
Comments: 13
Kudos: 491
Collections: Marvel Trumps Hate 2019





	Home Movies

**Author's Note:**

  * For [tangodoodles](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tangodoodles/gifts).



> This is one of two fic I've written for Marvel Trumps Hate, a charity auction. Thank you so much to tangodoodles for your generous donation and to the mods for running it!
> 
> Nat, thank you for your help polishing this. ♥

Tony was awake. This was a surprise, because he was pretty sure he was supposed to be dead. There was a bright light, but not the sort that was at the end of a tunnel. (He didn't remember a light before.) It was coming from a penlight, shining right into his eyes.

Tony closed his eyes. He said, "Do you mind?"

"Pupillary response is good," Strange said. "Can you tell me your name?"

"Who let you play doctor?" Tony wanted to know. He opened his eyes to a study, not quite the same as Strange's house on Baker Street. He was pretty sure there'd been less in the way of velvet curtains and skulls mounted on display. "Do you even have a medical license? Where am I?"

"He's fine," Strange said in a dismissive tone. "Wong, do you have the necromancer?"

A disembodied voice said, "I have her, but the apprentices got away."

Strange frowned. He looked Tony up and down. "I really don't have the time to deal with you."

"Make the time. What's going on?"

Strange didn't make the time. He opened a portal and shoved Tony through it. Tony landed on a couch in the middle of a lobby. Rhodey and Captain Glowy Hands were sitting on it. 

"He's your problem now," Strange said and closed the portal.

—

Rhodey took Tony's sudden resurrection like a champ. Much better than Tony was taking it, at any rate.

"I've been dead for _how long_?" Tony demanded.

"We're going to have to verify that you're actually you and this," Rhodey said, waving a hand up and down Tony's body, "isn't going to wear off, but once that's done, I'll get in contact with Pepper for you."

—

Eventually, Tony was released back into the world at large. S.H.I.E.L.D. set him up with an apartment, then Pepper set him up with a better one that had less obvious spyware. Tony's life was in shambles, but the world itself was better than the last time he'd seen it. There were more people, and they seemed happier, less defeated. It wasn't so much that hope seemed to have been breathed back into the world as the despair had drained away.

Tony was simultaneously delighted and heartbroken to be re-introduced to his own daughter, over twice as old and just as amazing as the adorable little munchkin he'd left behind. Things with Pepper were weird. ("Only you, Tony," she'd said and burst into tears as she'd hugged him. But she'd also stood firm that their 'til death had happened and she wasn't signing on for another round.) Even the bots had changed. Morgan had painted them pink when she was eight, apparently, then done a white and gold redesign at ten. Dum-E seemed to like it.

The A.I.s were all doing well, including the ones that should have been shelved.

("E.D.I.T.H. was only meant to be used in the case of galactic invasion," Tony said when he found out.

"There was a galactic invasion," Fury said.)

Peter—Peter was also older. He was alive to do all that growing up he'd missed out on after Titan. Now it was Tony's turn to have missed out.

("Wait, wait, you were how old when you got E.D.I.T.H.?" Tony asked.

"It was fine!" Peter insisted. "At least, it turned out fine. Eventually."

"It wasn't fine," Rhodey said.

"I didn't remember to put child locks on the glasses, did I?" Tony said.

Rhodey shook his head.

"But he did okay, right?" Tony said. "See, look. He's in one piece. I stand by my judgment."

Rhodey sighed. Peter gave Tony a thumbs up. Tony figured it evened out.)

There was just so much to catch up on. Facebook posts and Instagram and news articles and video of Morgan crushing the competition at her first robotics competition. Pepper had started dating again. Morgan had started middle school. Peter had apparently spent time as a wanted fugitive. There'd been a couple invasions and any number of Avengers-level incidents.

Tony wasn't really sure where to start.

—

Tony started chronologically. You'd think it would be gratifying to see for yourself how much people would miss you when you were gone. You'd be wrong. Video of his funeral was painful.

"Let's skip forward," Tony instructed F.R.I.D.A.Y., who was once more in his care (or rather, he was in hers). "What's the first thing I'd find interesting after that?"

"Miss Stark started therapy with an experienced child psychologist," F.R.I.D.A.Y. said.

Tony winced. "Good call, Pepper. Okay, next up? Let's let my daughter keep her doctor-patient confidentiality intact."

"Later that year was the false galactic invasion that preluded the real one," F.R.I.D.A.Y. said.

"That's what I'm talking about," Tony said, pointing emphatically from his position sprawled out on the couch. He opened up the bag of chips he'd gotten out for this. "Put it up on the wall. Let's see how the kid handled this."

Thanks to E.D.I.T.H., there was a lot of footage to go through. By the time the bag was empty, Tony was regretting eating any of them. He crumpled the bag, then tossed it at Beck's smarmy smiling face. Tony swallowed his gorge. He said, "Play it again. Slow it down."

F.R.I.D.A.Y. played it again. Frame by frame, he watched as the train hit Peter.

He put his head in his hands. He blinked hard a few times. He looked back up. He said, "Again."

—

The thing was, Tony stood by his choice. Peter was a good successor. He'd had any number of missteps, but it wasn't like Tony hadn't made his own over the years. Even if he had regrets (not about Peter, never about Peter, but about what he'd faced), it didn't matter. Peter was all grown up. Tony was years too late to fix this for him.

"Let's move on," Tony said finally. His eyes were dried out and irritated. It felt like he had sand instead of blood running through the fragile veins. "What's next on the docket?"

What was next was Morgan winning her elementary school's summer science fair—good job, tiny genius—then Peter being framed for murder.

—

"What are you doing here?" Peter asked from the door of the lab.

"What does it look like I'm doing?" Tony said, not looking up from where he was tweaking the design of an old suit using the holographics.

"It looks like you broke into my lab because you couldn't sleep," Peter said.

"Maybe I couldn't sleep because I don't have a proper lab anymore," Tony countered. 

"Yeah, sure," Peter said in a tone that said that didn't follow at all. He was probably aware that Tony had open offers at S.I. and with S.H.I.E.L.D., plus the smaller set-up Pepper had included with his new apartment. "Want to talk about it?" 

"Nope." Tony looked up. 

Peter was reassuringly solid. He didn't have circles under his eyes like bruises. He wasn't bleeding. He looked tired, but it was the tired of someone who had been woken up at three in the morning by an intruder in the lab wake-up call, not someone who was spending countless nights awake haunted by the recent past. Then again, the recent past hadn't been so bad for Peter. He'd graduated undergrad with honors. His Masters was going well according to the university's servers. He was newly single, but his last boyfriend (and wasn't _that_ a surprise) had been kind of trash, so Tony suspected (hoped) he wasn't that broken up about it. 

"Sorry to wake you," Tony said.

Peter smiled. "Are you?"

"I'm sorry I'm not sorry. Final offer."

Peter wandered closer. "Want to see what I've been working on?"

"I thought you'd never ask."

—

Tony probably should have taken the Beck thing as a sign to stick to the highlights. Headlines instead of live coverage. It would have been the sensible thing to do.

Tony had never been very good at being sensible. "Okay, F.R.I.D.A.Y. This Sinister Six thing. Go."

F.R.I.D.A.Y. went, drawing Tony along with her.

—

"I could get you a key," Peter said when he caught Tony in his lab again.

"If I needed a key, I wouldn't be here," Tony said.

Peter laughed, the sound startlingly warm. "You're right. I don't think you've ever needed a key in your life."

It was weird, was the thing. In the footage, Peter looked so young and so tired. He was bruised and bleeding and looked awful. There was something broken lurking in the back of his eyes. Someone had taken his enthusiasm and optimism and crushed it into powder, then choked him with it. He was still standing, refusing to back down, admirably proving himself over and over again, but—

Tony had never wanted that for him.

And yet, now, in person, Peter looked fine. They were old wounds long healed. He looked at Tony with a spark of something happy, something hopeful. He looked like he'd rediscovered wonder. He looked good.

"Why don't you show me what you're working on this time?" Peter said.

"Whatever you want," Tony said.

—

In Tony's defense, it wasn't just Peter. He showed up at Rhodey's place in the middle of the night, only to nearly get shot.

"Tony?" Rhodey said, dressed in boxers and a M.I.T. shirt, putting the gun down.

"Who else would break in at two in the morning? It's not like a burglar is going to decide to rob War Machine's apartment."

"That would have to be a pretty stupid burglar, sure," Rhodey said, rubbing at his cheek with his free hand, "but they'd have to know this is Iron Patriot's apartment first."

"You know, you could at least offer me a beer." 

"I'm not offering you a beer for breaking into my apartment." Rhodey had his unimpressed face on. It was kind of nostalgic.

"Peter offered me a key."

"Tony. It's two A.M. I say this with love: get out."

Because Tony was a good friend, he got out.

—

"Do you ever sleep?" Peter asked the third time it happened. He looked sleepy, eyes half-lidded and covering a yawn behind his hand. He had a pillow crease on his left cheek. Probably Tony should stop doing this. 

But look at that face, a little older, but perfectly intact. A strand of hair curled against his forehead, not matted with blood. He was wearing pajama bottoms and a thin t-shirt that stretched across his shoulders, not a shredded suit revealing abraded skin. 

Maybe what Tony should actually stop was looking at the footage of all the terrible things that had happened to Peter. 

(Tony wasn't going to do that either.)

"That's what coffee's for," Tony said, waving his mug with one hand.

Peter blinked. "Did you install a fancy coffeemaker in my lab?"

"I didn't not do that," Tony said.

Peter took the mug from Tony's hand. He put a hand to Tony's back, pushing him off the stool and toward the door. "Come on, I have a couch with your name on it." He bit his lower lip, then said, "And if you want, the bed's more than big enough for both of us."

Surprisingly, Peter's bed was big enough that they actually could have slept side by side without touching. He'd come a long way from lofts and bunkbeds. Tony crawled in next to Peter and put a hand over his chest, right over his heart. He let the rise and fall of Peter's chest as he breathed in and out lull him to sleep.

—

Tony didn't break into Pepper and Morgan's new home. He knew better than that. He did.

Instead, he watched Morgan play a tree in her first grade school play, absolutely killing it. See that gentle swaying? No one could make a better willow. Did she need lines? No. Every motion of her arms was poetry.

In the morning, he showed up to take Morgan out for a surprise breakfast.

"Thank you for calling first," Pepper said.

"Thank you for saying yes," Tony said.

Pepper smiled. The gentle lines at the corners of her eyes were a little deeper, but still looked good on her. "Of course."

—

Peter actually did give Tony a key. Two of them, actually.

"Use the lab if you want, but you're not that bad a roommate." Peter smiled as he handed both over. "And I'm not just saying that because my second college roommate turned out to be a super villain."

Tony put them both on his key ring. Sometimes, he used them.

—

Three months into being alive again, Tony got kidnapped by baby necromancers.

"It's not a kidnapping. You were in our custody to start with," Baby Necromancer One said. "We're reclaiming lost resources."

"No offense, but at this point, I'm not sure you're human enough to count," Baby Necromancer Two said.

"Offense taken," Tony said.

"Stop talking to the living corpse," Baby Necromancer Three said.

"I've got a heartbeat. I'm pretty sure I count as alive," Tony said.

Though Tony definitely wasn't a corpse, they locked him in a coffin. Through the wood, Tony could hear the muffled sound of voices and footsteps walking away. Shouting got him nothing. Pounding on the lid gave him a sore fist.

Tony had a minor panic attack the last time he'd tried suiting up, but henceforth he was going right back to wearing the casing everywhere. He was starting to regret not letting S.H.I.E.L.D. chip him.

Eventually, there were loud noises. Shouts, crashing noises, a general raucous that was either a good sign for Tony or indication that everything was about to get a lot worse. The lid of the coffin was wrenched off in a rain of splinters, revealing Peter in one of his newer suits.

"Normally I'd have some quippy one liner here, but I really need you to tell me you're okay," Peter said.

"Coffins are a lot less comfortable than you'd think," Tony said, "and I think I've spent more than enough time in one. Help me out?"

Peter's hand was trembling minutely as he reached out a hand. Tony was suddenly and unfortunately reminded of Beck, of the illusion of Tony's zombie crawling out of the grave. Tony gripped Peter's hand and swung himself out of the coffin.

"I'm okay," Tony said, quiet, but firm. He didn't let go of Peter's hand. "I promise: I'm okay."

The new suit was thin enough that Tony could see as Peter swallowed. "Okay." He straightened, his shoulders going back. "Okay."

—

The baby necromancers were rounded up. Tony didn't need to stick around for it, so he didn't. He went home. He tried to sleep, but it still wasn't happening. He got up. He had F.R.I.D.A.Y. put something on.

—

For all the times Tony had crashed Peter's apartment and the lab attached, he hadn't expected Peter to return the favor.

"I can't believe you're watching a worst of compilation of my superheroing career," Peter said before Tony could tell F.R.I.D.A.Y. to turn it off.

"How did you get in here?" Tony asked. "Did you learn how to pick locks while I was dead? Did you try to balance out the superheroing with a minor life in crime?"

"You left the door unlocked," Peter said.

That made more sense than Peter deciding to climb in through the window before knocking on the door. "Is that judgment I detect in your voice?"

Peter dropped onto the cushion next to Tony's. "Maybe for your taste in film. A lot of good movies came out in the last six years, and you're watching this?"

"Got any recommendations?" Tony asked.

"Not this." Peter's eyes were unreadable as he watched Tony's figure crawl out of the grave. "F.R.I.D.A.Y.?"

F.R.I.D.A.Y. cut the footage.

"I can't believe all my A.I.s like you more," Tony said, though the complaint in his voice was weak.

"You're the one who made me the admin." Well, yes, but Tony was supposed to be dead for that.

"I think I liked you better as an obedient fourteen year old who thought I could do no wrong," Tony said.

"I was never obedient," Peter said, a bit of a smile stealing back onto his face.

"But you admit you thought I could do no wrong?" Tony nudged Peter's thigh with his knee. "So. What's up? Not that I don't appreciate the company, but usually this goes the other way."

Peter put his hand on Tony's knee. His eyelashes lowered as he stared down at where his fingers traced the circle of Tony's kneecap. "Would it be so bad if it went both ways?"

"I don't need you to worry about me, kid," Tony said, but he didn't pull away.

"Too late," Peter said.

It was unfair how good Peter looked this late at night. He had a trace of stubble on his jaw. His hair was a tousled, finger-combed mess. The t-shirt he was wearing was rumpled, like he'd left it unfolded in the clean laundry basket until he'd pulled it on. At some point in the last six years, he'd gone from an awkward colt still growing into his legs to a graceful mustang. Peter licked his lips, and Tony couldn't take his eyes off Peter's mouth. 

"I'm really glad you're alive," Peter said in a soft voice. He leaned in slowly, giving Tony plenty of warning. 

It was late. They were both tired. People had always told Tony he shouldn't make major decisions on three hours of sleep in as many days. Kissing Peter would be a major decision, something he couldn't take back no matter how much he might regret it.

(Tony didn't think he would regret this.)

Tony let the kiss land, a sweet, soft thing. It was the sort of kiss that would disconnect if the other party flinched away. Tony didn't flinch. He brought a hand up to the back of Peter's neck and with gentle pressure and the movement of his lips encouraged something a little firmer, a bit more confident. Peter's hand on his knee lifted slightly to skate up his thigh. For an instant, Tony thought Peter was just going to go for it, but instead he shifted it to the outside of Tony's thigh, then his hip. The angle was awkward.

Peter stopped kissing Tony to say, "Can I—?"

"Whatever you want." 

What Peter apparently wanted was to climb into Tony's lap and kiss some more. Peter kissed like he wasn't in a hurry, like he was happy to do this all night, like he hadn't spent the evening fighting necromancers and it wasn't so late it was growing early. He ran his hands slowly up Tony's sides, felt up his shoulders, carded his fingers through Tony's hair. He mouthed at Tony's jaw and lipped at his earlobe. He nuzzled Tony's temple.

Tony couldn't say he was unaffected.

"Let me take you to dinner tomorrow," Peter said in a low voice.

"Shouldn't that be my line?" Tony was pretty sure that should be his line.

"If it's your line, then I'm saying yes." Peter swept his thumb along Tony's jaw. "I should go home and sleep."

"Or you could stay here. I don't have a couch with your name on it, but the bed's definitely big enough for both of us."

"What about the couch we're sitting on?" Peter asked.

"Kind of a tight fit for two, but we can make it work."

Peter smiled, small, but warm. "I think we really can."

Peter stayed. They didn't sleep on the couch.

—

The next time Tony couldn't sleep and pulled up footage of the time he'd missed, Peter got up and settled in right next to him.

"You don't want to watch this," Tony said.

"If you're watching it, I'm watching it," Peter said.

Tony looked at Peter. He looked at the bloodied image of Peter on the wall. He said, "F.R.I.D.A.Y., change the channel." Throwing an arm around Peter's shoulders, Tony said, "Okay, Ebert. What would you like to see instead?"

—

They made it work.


End file.
